Analyzing blog posts to understand your audience on a deeper level

Once you have found a post that has a ton of engagement, analyze it on following parameters.

Motivations

Pain points

Goals

Challenges

Behaviour

Lets consider the same example about body fat and analyze it on these parameters.

Here is the juicy stuff that I found in less than 10 min.

Maybe this is not news to many of you, but I had this pretty extreme “aha” moment regarding belly fat. Even though I still have ten pounds to lose, and can pinch a good layer of chub on my tummy, it has lost that pregnant/beer gut protruding look.

I never really thought about where on/in my body I carried and stored my fat before this process. For some reason, I felt like I was a skinny person inside a layer of blubber. I now realize that while some of the fat was directly under my skin, there was also a lot of intramuscular fat as well as fat in my core and organs.

I feel that I have now lost most of that core/organ fat. Despite the floppy/jiggly bits that remain, my stomach has a more toned/defined look and feel to it. This has really become noticeable to me over the past month.

And then it hit me. I HAD PACKED MY INTERNAL ORGANS FULL OF FAT. and I was like ‘holy shit, that is BAD news’. I never had body image issues before I started losing weight. And, I was always healthy (low BP, cholesterol, etc). But wow, I was not being kind to my body. And now that all of that excess weight is gone, my body is so much happier and so am I.

I found this thought terrifying. Like the difference between wearing a fat suit that you can simply shed versus having the fat invade every cell in your body. I always felt like the former, but now I realize that I was wrong. I never want to do that to my insides ever again.

Maybe some of you realize this already. I feel like this entire process is like emerging from a very dark room into the sunlight and my eyes are slowly adjusting to the scene, little glimpses at a time. I was always slightly curious about how some people (men especially) got that “beer gut” look. They didn’t seem exceptionally jiggly or blubbery and now I think I realize that they are probably storing much of their fat and excess weight in their core and around their organs. For whatever reason, that thought is just horrifying to me from a health perspective.

Thanks again for everyone who contributes to this amazing community! I am closing in on my one-year anniversary of taking control over my body and I have never felt better.

I have taken gross anatomy and have done several cadaveric dissections, and I can say that when overweight or obese cadavers come in the amount of fat between the muscles and the organs is unreal. Pounds and pounds of fat where there should be very little, or none. Not to mention several inches of subcutaneous fat all around the person. It is gross, and makes the dissections much more difficult to do precisely.

When you compare it to a person with relatively low body fat, it is like night and day.

Summary

What readers REALLY want is something that connects with them on a deeper level. Content that evokes negative emotions like worry, fear, anger & frustration. But also evokes positive emotions like joy, happiness, gratitude, inspiration and love.

They like content that makes them think. Persuades them to take action. And makes their lives better.

Many popular sites like Reddit, Quora, Digg, Mashable, StumbleUpon etc have a ton of engaging content. To understand your audience, find posts in your niche that have most upvotes, likes and shares. And then analyze them on the parameters like motivations, goals and pain points.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Do you know what your readers REALLY want? Let me know in the comments below.